In the audience-chamber, attached to her own apartments, she found the king, who had been aroused to keener admiration and deeper tenderness by her late danger. He approached her with smiles of welcome, and pressed his lips upon her hand as if she had been a goddess, and he her slave; happiness gave grace and quick intelligence to his face; for when Louis the Sixteenth thought from his heart, the result was always correct and full of tenderness. “We have been waiting your presence, almost with impatience,” he said. “My heart will never rest till it has done something to reward the man who saved me and France from a great calamity. This person is now in the outer room.” “But there is another, sire; a young girl, fair as a lily, and as modest. She must not be forgotten.” “We forget nothing which relates to our wife and queen. No one ever gives her help or pleasure unthought of. The demoiselle is also in attendance—shall they come in at once?” The ladies of the household had ranged themselves behind her majesty with more than usual regard to appearances. Some of the king’s gentlemen were present; in fact, it might have been some foreign ambassador that their majesties were about to receive, rather than a poor girl and a working man from the city. The queen gave a smiling glance at her mistress of ceremonies. Directly the door opened, and Marguerite was led into the room by the young Duke de Richelieu, who seemed as proud of his charge as if she had been one of the highest born ladies in the land. Behind him Monsieur Jacques walked alone, his head just visible over the broad shoulders of Dame Tillery, who spread her enormous fan as she crossed the threshold, and performed a courtesy so low and profound that she came near falling headlong at the queen’s feet, in a bungling effort to recover herself. The mistress of ceremonies, terribly shocked, made a dignified motion that Dame Tillery should draw back; but the good woman placed herself at Marguerite’s side, shook out her skirts, and settled into position, smiling broadly upon the mistress of ceremonies as if a mutual understanding on all subjects of court etiquette had existed between themselves from the cradle up. The queen, who sometimes enjoyed the discomfiture of her own hard task-mistress, where etiquette was concerned, cast a quick, mischievous glance on her ladies, and allowed a faint smile to quiver on her lips. But for that smile, Marguerite would have been completely bewildered. She saw the same faces that had met her the day before, but so changed in expression, so rigidly proud, that their very identity seemed doubtful. The long, trailing robes, the elaborate head-dresses, the floating masses of yellow lace were so unlike the short, rustic dresses in which she had seen the same persons only a few hours before, that she could not realize her position. The queen saw her embarrassment, and hastened to relieve it. With a gentle smile, she extended her hand.